By the time Louie Bellson got around to taking his seat behind his drums at "An Afternoon of Jazz" at Agoura High School on Sunday afternoon, a nearly full house had already been treated to the impressive big-band sounds of the school's award-winning "A" and "B" jazz ensembles. "They're really an inspiration," Bellson said during the three-hour show's intermission. "They know a lot more, can play a lot better than kids could when I was young." Bellson, who will turn 65 this July and who seems the embodiment of "forever young," fronted a big band composed of the youngsters.

The avant-garde Japanese punk band Boredoms recently recruited 88 drummers to perform the percussion symphony 88BoaDrum at the La Brea Tar Pits, but that would seem to be nothing compared with the 300 children expected to simultaneously pound the skins at Rhythm Child on Sunday at the Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga. What would possess anyone (anyone who's not Tommy Lee, that is) to encourage a toddler's interest in drums? A firm belief in the musical ability of all children helps Rhythm Child founder Norman Jones take the pain out of percussion.

To the casual music fan, drums are Ringo Starr. They're the province of the lead singer's unglamorous opposite, equipment cluttering the rear of the stage, pounded on by figures deep in the shadows. As both drummer and businessman, Remo Belli sees something different. "It ain't all rock 'n' roll," cracked Belli, founder and CEO of Remo Inc., the world's leading seller of drumheads--the skin that drummers hit.

In an unbridled display of free-spirited pandemonium, they shout and dance and beat on everything imaginable -- cowbells, congas and timbales; West African djembes, Middle Eastern doumbeks and Jamaican kettledrums; water bottles, buckets, milk crates, cardboard boxes, pots, pans and skateboards. If it were possible to play a kitchen sink, some percussionists would do it. The call of the drum is that loud.

Earlier this week, during the height of the attempted Soviet coup, drummer Louie Bellson voiced his concern for Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he'd met during one of the Soviet leader's visits to this country. "This man tried his best to further human rights," he said, "and this could take them right back to the Dark Ages."

Indian drum maker Mike Kopepassah cuts a spiral rawhide thong from a wet pelt, then laces it through holes in saturated cowhides stretched over and under a gnarled, hollowed-out cottonwood stump. The hides will dry and shrink tight, turning the stump into one of about 20,000 drums produced every year by craftsmen at Taos Drums and sent out worldwide. Some of the company's drums weigh hundreds of pounds, cost thousands of dollars and double as coffee tables.

To the casual music fan, drums are Ringo Starr. They're the province of the lead singer's opposite, cluttering the rear of the stage, deep in the shadows. As both drummer and businessman, Remo Belli sees something different. "It ain't all rock 'n' roll," cracked Belli, founder and CEO of Remo Inc. in Valencia, the world's leading seller of drumheads, the skins that drummers hit. Belli, inventor of the synthetic drumhead, envisions a whole new market--therapy drummers.

It's an impressive sight--30 or more barrel-shaped Japanese taiko drums set in a half circle across the stage of the Japan America Theatre. And an impressive sound as well--a rolling rhythmic thunder, delivered with enthusiastic vigor. But this is not a performance by professional taiko artists.

Francis Awe's grandfather was named Adibulu, which means "somebody whose first opening of eyes saw drum first," according to Awe (pronounced AH-way ). It seems to run in the family. Even when he was a baby being reared in a Nigerian village, "any time the talking drum was played, I always would burst into an unusual cry, my grandmother has told me. So she, as an experiment, took me to where the drums were being played, and I would stop crying.